Overall

My impression of MWC (Mobile World Congress, nee 3GSM) is it was quieter than last year, less hype and less people; however, the organizers claim attendance was up 3000, perhaps they were all the pick-pockets? 

I think the industry is at a crossroad, in my discussions with operators internet access is the product that's selling at the moment, with operators facing the same operational challenges of broadband ISPs (Internet Service Providers) as traffic grows exponentially.  Some mobile operators are seriously asking if being a mobile broadband ISP is really that bad.  This question sets up the crossroad, do operators take a left and follow the ISP route, or continue along the current strategy, or perhaps take a right along a path that enables and enhances services over their network (the nebulous open network initiative).

The flight to and from MWC was full of misbehaving adolescents playing with the toys bought by their parents and ignoring the flight-crew's instructions to turn them off.  Unfortunately, the 'adolescents' where middle-aged telecom workers playing with iPhones.  However, it certainly provided a clear example of why the industry continues to over-estimate what customers can do with their mobiles.  I felt the need to rebel, so I brought out my seven year old Nokia 6130i and pointed out to my neighbour that it would not run out of battery during the show, he then brought out an equally old Moto phone and agreed with me.
 

Top two topics: Mobile Advertising and LTE / HSPA Evolved (HSDPA+). 

The focus on LTE/HSDPA+ (Long Term Evolution / High Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a natural extension to the success some operators have in providing competitively priced internet access with HSPA.  There were many announcements on this topic with Telstra moving to HSPA Evolved (21/42 Mbps) this year, with LTE (160 Mbps) on the roadmap.  Ericsson estimates there are 174 HSPA networks in 76 countries with an estimated 180 million HSPA subscribers.  Alcatel-Lucent and NEC are teaming on development of LTE with the creation of a new joint venture, which given Ericsson claims LTE will be commercially available in 2009, means the new JV needs to work fast. 

Mobile Advertising is a simple label, but it leads to misconceptions.  A more appropriate, though not as succinct, label could be: Advertising over the mobile channel as part of a digital media campaign.  At the show, most applications had a "mobile advertising" component, most network elements gathered business intelligence for "mobile advertising," and most service platforms included the ability to insert "mobile advertising."  As I've unfortunately slowly learnt through my career, understanding your customer in-depth and providing a simple to understand (for them) solution to their immediate problem is the only way to extract cash.  In Advertising, media buyers and advertising agencies are the customers (the ones with the cash).  Very few companies were talking the advertiser's language, e.g. giving them 'slots' to 'targets' for their 'campaigns.'  Instead assuming the customer will change the way they do business given the unproven richness of mobile.  However, the announcement from Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Three that they are working together to develop common measurement standards for mobile advertising is a great first step

Mobile does transform the way advertising works, but equally Facebook (the online world) has lots of information about me, yet it still keeps inserting adverts for 30+ singles in my area, no wonder some social networks are seeing click-through rates of 2-4 per 10,000 impressions; that's not a campaign, that's an accident.  In the many pitches on mobile advertising at the show only one company had a complete end-to-end business intelligence and ad insertion solution, IMImobile www.imimobile.com, the wrinkle is you would need to adopt their complete managed VAS solution for that to be the case.

Other interesting insights from the show 

The variety of mobile phones and mobile enabled devices at the show was astounding, hundreds of new devices, at the high end Sony Ericsson's first Windows Mobile handset the Xperian 1, Nokia's N96 and Samsung's Soul should provide current iPhone users a reason to change their device by the middle of this year.

SUPL (Secure User Plane Location) is an IP based method to get the AGPS (Assisted GPS - cheaper GPS unit that needs to know roughly where it is before it works) unit up and running on a phone without the cost and complexity of a control plan solution.  TCS (www.telecomsys.com) were demonstrating their SUPL based navigation solution.  Available under a rev-share managed service framework this provides an ideal first step for smaller operators or those operators with limited geographic coverage or those not yet convinced on LBS (Location Based Services). 

Android from Google was capturing the attention of the press; however, there were lots of demos for the competing LiMo (Linux Mobile) at least 10 handsets from 5 companies.  Most of the demos were pedestrian from a user experience perspective.  Customers really care about how the phone looks, the price, the battery life, how easy it is to use, the bundled applications, and even the ease to sync with their corporate or personal email; OS is far down the list.   As A la Mobile pointed out when they announced their Android demo back in January, "Despite the open-source nature of the Android framework, developing a complete mobile system solution with customized, differentiated features continues to present major technical challenges requiring considerable time, effort, and resources."  Open source OS are not really free given the lack of a common hardware architecture like the PC. 

SpinVox (www.spinvox.com) continues its progress, launching with Vodafone Spain.  A simple voice to text service provided as a managed service.

Open Network is a nebulous term.  However, the SDP (Service Delivery Platform) is becoming a focus for many  operators as they look to make it easy for 3^rd parties, enterprises and their own services to use network capabilities such as billing, profile, single sign-on, presence, location, etc.  This was one of the topics of discussion with many operators at the show.
 

Start-ups to keep an eye-on:

Cibenix (www.cibenix.com): sometimes it's a matter of stamina, the ODP (On Device Portal) is in a renaissance with successful deployments in operators such as Three and Vodafone, and Cibenix is one of the few ODP remaining.

eBIZ.mobility (www.ebizmobility.com) enables operators to become a PayPal for online purchases using their existing billing system.

IMImobile (www.imimobile.com) has created a strong position in APAC, LATAM and MEA.  A simple managed VAS solution, e.g. content, content management and the gateways to deliver the content, all provided under a revenue share framework.  Several operators and suppliers were commenting on the difficulty to make money on content, I pointed them to look at an out-sourced model that is making money on content for over 200 operators today.

Useful Networks (www.useful-networks.com) and ULocate (www.ulocate.com) are saving the operator the problem of managing the 'long tail' of LBS by aggregating all those weird and wacky apps and making discovery easy.

Wadaro (www.wadaro.com) has a cute little app on the OS or SIM that monitors how calls or data sessions fail / terminate, and reports the stats back to a managed platform.  A simple way to find problems and focus network investment to improve the basic mobile experience.

Telephony was the first user generated content (UGC) service.  Operators provide a pipe, and we filled it with a conversation.  It fulfills a basic human need, the need to communicate, and as been successful around the world.  As telecommunication services become more sophisticated we're witnessing a divergence amongst operators on service success.  The roots of this divergence comes from local market conditions such as cultural, regulatory, competitive and national pricing factors.  Let's examine some of those differences.

• Caller Ring Back Tone: that tune you hear rather than the usual ringing tone when you call someone.  South Korea is generally considered the birthplace of the service.  We've also seen success in countries such as India, yet a relatively low take-up in countries such as Singapore.  With this service cultural factors have a big impact.  South Korea has a strong local popular music scene, India too.  Singapore with its diverse population does not have a unified music scene.   So imagine the scenario, you're in Singapore and you call a friend only to hear some wailing rather than the usual ring-back-tone, it does not encourage take up of the service, unless its to get back at the individual subjecting you to the wailing.
• VoiceSMS: that simple service that enables people to send a voice message rather than an SMS.  Some countries, for example Indonesia, have shown rapid taking up, while trials in India and Singapore have generated poor results.  The driver is local market related; it's to do with the literacy rate, with low literacy it's easier to listen to a message than read one.  While in text-mad countries like Singapore, with a big bundle of SMS included in your plan, why would a customer want to pay for an additional VoiceSMS service?
• Bundling: In the US there's a revolution underway, the old cable TV monopoly is dead.  Verizon FiOS enables customers to have a far richer TV experience, as well as voice and data (20 Mbits down / 5 Mbit/s return) for just $95 + tax.  While in the UK, the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) struggle with their video strategy, limited by the real-world throughput of ADSL, e.g. that annoying bell-wire in the home wiring that acts as an aerial for inference.  Cable at only 50% coverage of households, and monopolistic control of TV content by BSkyB, the local market conditions of the UK makes creating a competitive bundle of voice, video and data for all except BSkyB and Virgin difficult.
• Missed Call Summary: the SMS alert received when your mobile is turned on that list the calls missed while the phone was off.  It's a simple business case, it stimulates calling by 1.5-4%.  But in the US, where customers buy big bundles of minutes to avoid overage charges, such stimulation is bad for operators because it means customers use a little bit more of their bundle, which costs additional network resources.  Local pricing factors limit what services will be considered for launch by operators.
• Family bundle: shared minutes plans have proven very popular in the US.  Some operators have over half their customers on shared minutes plans.  This then enables VAS (Value Added Services) to be targeted to those plans, e.g. family finder a location based service.  Disney achieved 30% take-up of that service at $9.99 per month, before it closed down.  In Europe, evolving from a usage based model, shared minute plans are only starting to emerge; mobile phone purchase is generally an individual purchase.  While in the US, it tends to be linked to a household decision, hence the greater interest in quad-play.  On the issue of sticker-shock from quad-play; customers are not stupid, if they have 3 bills for $50 per month, and they can consolidate that to one bill for $120, they know they're saving $30 per month - its what they do with their credit card debt.
• Push to Talk: Blue collar workers love it because they work in a highly interrupted environment; it's not about conversations rather issuing instructions.  PTT was once promoted as a cool service teenagers would adopt.  How detached from reality can someone be?  Teenagers love SMS because they can have a private conversation with their friends, even within ear shot of their parents, try doing that with PTT.  Cultural factors are critical when evaluating services.
• i-mode: Back in the 90s, when we used dial-up to access the internet, Japan was in a sorry state with respect to internet access.  Most young people did not have a fixed phone line at home because it required a sizeable deposit to NTT, so they did not access the internet.  i-mode (NTT DoCoMo) provided a convenient way to access Japanese content, email and did not require a big deposit.  In addition, NTT DoCoMo controls the value chain in Japan unlike any other operator in the World - even Verizon.  So they could define the handsets, the software, the business models and had a hungry market.  This is an example of local market factors creating a unique situation.  I think we've seen enough i-mode failures outside Japan to realise it is specific to the Japanese market.

The list of examples goes on, in the Middle East there are some quite unique local market factors that I do not have space to cover here.  So whenever anyone quotes a service success in another market, we must analyse why it was successful in that market, then examing the similarities and differences between the markets to better understand its chances in the local market.